A freedom of speech case will make it to the US Supreme Court, but nothing will come of it. In a 5-4 decision, the censorship will be upheld as constitutional.
Man, I feel like you're the voiceover for a future history channel show, chronicling the end times. I can hear it...
Sorry, I was being a little hyperbolic to express my strong feelings. You're right, it wouldn't be the internet. But it would be largely the end of "the internet as we know and love it". All the undergrounding and moving to Europe you've described would likely result in splinter internets, similar to the chinese internet behind the great wall of fire, and multiple "Internets" = "THE internet" is dead.
Can we get/. to join in the blackout? I suppose everybody who visits/. already knows about SOPA, but we really need to get everybody in on this.
They're going to ruin the internet. The INTERNET.:O Think of the lolcats!
There were a few links, the one I read explained the legal case very clearly but did not explain what OpenDDR was at all. Grandparent mentioned Konami possibly suing, so I assumed openDDR was an open DDR game project that used the WURFL for peripheral support. I guess he was just concerned about the "DDR" initialism being used in any context, but yeah, as people pointed out, if its not in the same field, it doesn't count.
Calm down, I did read TFA and TFS.
"ScientiaMobile, the company formed behind the open source library WURFL, an API used to do mobile device detection for web applications, has issued a DMCA takedown notice against the OpenDDR project on Github. ScientiaMobile claims that OpenDDR is 'ripping them off' by forking their database, which used to be licensed under a liberal license. Newer versions of the device database are licensed under restrictive licenses which do not allow any modification or redistribution."
You show me where in that it is
it's pretty obvious even from TFS that they are not
It specifies that it is used for web applications, but games can be web applications. It does say mobile device detection, and I might have skimmed that as just "device detection", but still, not exactly spelling it out.
Seriously, honest mistake. But it was fairly ambiguous. Get off your high horse.
There are FOUR links on that page. Do all 4 count as TFA? Between them, two are just links to the websites of the things involved, those aren't "fing articles" so we're left with two:
A plaintext post of the takedown notice
A blog entry detailing the events, giving context, and including quotes and legal information and history of the involved.
Of those two, which is TFA? The second never mentions ANYTHING about it being a mobile device registry.
Konami have a problem with DDR the outside field of use infringement as there are other uses already out there (e.g. DDR Ram), so they can't argue the uniqueness factor and would have to explicitly argue that that use hurts their games, which would be a lot harder to do as the use has nothing to do with games.
Except it isn't just DDR, its both DDR and DanceDanceRevolution. So, is OpenDDR just "OpenDDR" or does it explain it as an initialism? (not an acronym! )
If they state it as "Open Dance Dance Revolution" then that's a whole different ballgame. And I would argue DDR in the gaming field, especially dance games, implies Dance Dance.
The article was all about a DMCA notice, so it feels like you implied it. I suppose you were just asking a totally different question that this article brought up.
Yeah, its possible this could bring it all to Konami's Lawyer's attention, and get them cease & desist'd.
I'm not sure if "takedown notice" applies explicitly to the DMCA, but the DMCA does have a specific "take down" section, "DMCA take-down notices" have become popular in the common tongue and it isn't really applied to other things. There are probably lots of uses a lawyer could tell us are called "take downs", but you wouldn't call a subpoena or a lawsuit or a C&D a takedown.
They could try to, although that is A COMPLETELY SEPARATE ISSUE here. Konami doesn't care at all about WURFL and WURFL doesn't care about Konami. Konami could attempt to send a cease & desist (not a take-down) if DDR is indeed trademarked, don't know the specifics there or if Konami cares about suing some small non-profit non-commercial project. That said, plenty of companies do, and maybe Konami could. Or maybe they couldn't IANAL. Sounds like you aren't either:P
This story was all about OpenDDR using open-sourced code that changed licences, and the permissions and licences involved therein. It has nothing to do with the DDR brand and so nothing to do with Konami, its purely about the software implementation of OpenDDR.
TLDR: DMCA is about copyright of software intellectual property. Trademark is about protection of consumer brand names. You're mixing the two. Konami might have a trademark infringement claim, but that is seperate from WURFL's code copyright claim.
Except when you consider the error rate of counting the votes. This isn't even a matter of not RTFA, you didn't RTFSUMMARY.
If the error rate in counting votes is higher than the difference between two candidates' votes, then we DO NOT KNOW who actually won. It is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that a handful of votes could have been miscounted or misplaced somewhere along the line, the people who collect and count the votes admit this.
Also, it doesn't take 50% plus 1 to win, because there are more than 1 candidate in a primary. This isn't the general election bro...
He received 25.0001% of the vote, with the next candidate receiving 25% of the vote. If we can't be sure of that.0001%, we can't declare a clear winner.
However, since this isn't the general election, it is up to the Republican Party how to handle it, not the Supreme Court or any nonsense like that.
What about the other 13 games on there? You said: "Maybe games from 2 years ago supported XP, but most of the games on the shelf now don't." This is clearly false. I give you a list of 14 of the top 15 games released in the last 6 months, and you have a problem with a single game that "doesn't count" in your view? Disingenuous.
I admitted that a large part of my perception had to do with using xp 64, and it being far more broken and unsupported than 32 bit xp.
Just Cause 2 is another game that doesn't support xp, off the top of my head.
XP is getting old, but aside from security and software support, it is a perfectly viable OS. GFWL and DX10/11 are pushing developers towards vista/7.
Its not as bad as I thought (again, I run xp 64, got a bad impression) but still...
And how much did you pay for this again?
It was several years ago, so I can't be positive, but I'm fairly certain it was over $100, quite the expensive software, and I've purchased Windows XP more than once too, for my computer, my parents' computer, etc.
That said, I know there are more. My girlfriend's computer (windows xp 32 bit) has refused to install several games lately. Battlefield 3 was one of them, but not the only one. I'm trying to remember the others...
Nice how you cherry-pick and ignore my arguments. Games For Windows Live is broken for XP 64 and Windows has abandoned it. Allow me to reiterate: ALL GFWL GAMES ARE BROKEN ON XP 64. Support for 32 bit GFWL XP is going out. Direct x 10 and 11 are vista/7 exclusive. These are indeed factual evidence. How can you argue with that? Microsoft deliberately made it so that DirectX now only works on the latest version of Windows. More games than I thought still include Dx9 options, but you miss out. And increasingly more games are not including Dx9, it takes lots of additional development time.
Minecraft is a java game, that hardly counts. It is available on every system, even linux, unlike most games. It runs on the java virtual machine, not on windows xp.
I guess I've been having more problems because I'm on windows xp 64 bit, which is really windows server 2003 64-bit or some nonsense and was completely dropped by Microsoft awhile ago, unlike XP 32 which is just running out of support.
Its a free market, as long as lots of people still use XP then software developers will target it, but its a cost/payoff balance. As more people move to the latest OS, fewer will target the old OS, so more will move to the new OS,... its a cycle.
Microsoft absolutely knows this, and they try to push it. It would be bad business not to, they spend tons of money (especially other departments like the zune, windows phone, etc.) and have to make it up by selling new software.
But I don't buy it when they say they "couldn't" make Dx10/11 work on XP, they just didn't want to continue to support an old software when they had a new one to sell.
Anything Direct X 10/11, by way of Microsoft's tactics, is windows vista/7 exclusive unless they write support for the dx9 renderer too, which is increasingly no longer the case. Maybe games from 2 years ago supported XP, but most of the games on the shelf now don't. The Old Republic does because like WoW, it is purposely targeting the lowest common denominator of gaming. Most next-gen games are vista/7 exclusive.
Skyrim does support XP, so I guess its not too uncommon.
On the other hand,
Games for Windows Live does not support windows XP anymore (64 bit is broken and unplayable for ALL games), and LOTS of games force you to use GFWL login. So.. there.
You're absolutely right that supply isn't a factor. However, the way it is, studios are allowed to spend what they want and normalize it by charging us all regardless; so I end up paying for trash films that I would never see, and would never want to help finance. I guess here in America we have a very buyer beware culture, the cinema can do whatever the hell it likes and you just have to make the best of it, if you don't like it, don't see the movie. But that isn't exactly fair, and isn't exactly ideal either.
You got it backwards; more people are seeing Mission Impossible. So even though MI cost more money to produce, its MI that would cost $3 to see, where Young Adult would cost $15. Since Young Adult is less popular, though, this seems accurate. You pay more to get something harder to come by. Less people are going to see that movie, so you have to pay more per person to make it worth showing that movie in the theater.
They have to pay back the same amount to the studios regardless how how many tickets they sell, so why would they implement variable pricing?
well, maybe thats the problem.
Used to be, if you wanted to buy one blockbuster movie, you had to buy ALL the movies from that studio. It was how they sold their crappy movies.
See: the Paramount anti-trust stuff.
So, it sounds like we're still caught in a similar situation, movie studios having too much control over theaters. Or maybe its just our culture is too ingrained in the idea that movies should all be equivalent in cost.
Personally a world where each film succeeds or fails on its own merits doesn't sound too bad. I guess it would suck for the movie studios, and they've gotta aggregate that cost somewhere. Still, why not do it on the bottom line, we made this much off this film, we lost on this film? They already do that, so why try to cover it up? And now I remember an article I read about Hollywood accounting, and how insane their practices are...
Seriously? What kind of distorted world view do you have? Software developers go where the demand is. Software is still being supported and developed to run on Windows XP to this day and it will continue to be as long as customers run XP. Please, cite some evidence showing Microsoft is sending goons to software vendors and forcing them to code for Windows 7 only if you're going to spout such tripe.
They're not sending goons, lets not get hyperbolic:P
So, what still supports XP out there? Every box I've seen in the last few years only says Vista/7
You realize we're talking about upgrade from a product relaesed 10 years ago... so it's more like paying $100 every 10 years.
There was this thing called Vista. It was pretty bad, so most of us don't talk about it. They sold it to us, it had problems, they fixed them, and sold it to us again (rather than fixing what we bought).
If only more of the software industry would target... mac
Apples upgrades cost less but also come more frequently and are subsidized by hardware. Further, Apple isn't very concerned about your "I bought this software, it's mine, and I'll use it" mentality, as they restrict what type of device you can run their OS on very heavily. Want to install your 10 year old Windows XP OS on a brand new state of the art computer? Nothing stopping you. Not gonna have much success with with OSX 10.0 on a brand new Apple computer though. And remind me, which company is forcing you to upgrade again? Or how about if you want to install your brand new Windows 7 OS on a 5 year old computer? Might be a little slow but go right ahead. You'll find that installing OSX 10.7 on a 5 year old intel Mac is impossible.
Apple's upgrades are subsidized by hardware... this is a flaw? Sounds like a good business strategy to me.
No, Apple isn't crazy about software freedom, but I wasn't really talking about that. I was talking about the ability to continue to use an old computer, and I assure you that an old mac running OSX 10.0 will stay secure a lot longer than windows 98 stock. You have trouble installing OSX 10 on a modern mac... but that is because it is an entirely different processor architecture. I wouldn't expect you to be able to install Windows x86 on an ARM either.
Also, Win7 on a 5 year old computer might be a little slow? HAH. Try frozen solid. The bloat is insane. Even if you turn off Aero glass, it still uses waaaaay more resources than XP ever did.
The real point is, we need more options, we need more competition. Apple is really a niche, they serve those who have a little extra money and would prefer good service and good aesthetics without too much maintenance. But they're not targeting the vast majority of us, the power users, who have been burned by Windows for years. Linux is a good alternative (and its many flavors) but the software market has yet to embrace it. So we continue to deal with Microsoft's OS monopoly.
Reminds me of another reason you can't keep running XP, only the latest and greatest windows gets support from software vendors, because MS strong arms everybody into moving every time they come out with a major upgrade, and they drop the last version.
Microsoft should be more honest, and just charge you a yearly fee to use windows, and then continue to upgrade and support it forever. The whole buying a box of software is an illusion. Their terms of service make this all the more so.
Paying $100+ for Windows seems like even more of a ripoff when I've got to buy it again every 2 years.
I bought this software, its mine, and I'll use it, thank you very much.
If only more of the software industry would target linux and mac, we could get away from having to pay an arm and a leg to Redmond every few years.
Dunno about you guys, but I don't exactly have a ton of free cash to spend.
Except that he works as PR for the company that makes the Avenger, and he just got canned HARD. They did the right thing and apologized, and now THEY're going to get lots of free publicity, which is cool, they actually deserve it. Meanwhile anybody who googles this guy's name is going to see a MESS and he shouldn't be able to work anywhere near PR in the next century.
Haha, Mike K from Penny Arcade even cast doubt as to whether he HAS a wife or child:P Not sure, so I guess I'll take him on the benefit of the doubt that there are death threats. That said, you're absolutely right, so far his MO has been lying and misinforming left and right to try to cover his own ass. I wouldn't be surprised to find that he only got spammed with some internet memes, and he called it death threats to get sympathy. Still, we don't know.
Amazingly, there is a specific exemption for a few sites inside SOPA, of which GoDaddy is one. -__- The corruption knows no bounds.
godaddy supports sopa because of exemption
Quote,
"Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), the only member of Congress present at the hearing with any tech experience, having founded several web companies... Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA. If companies like GoDaddy.com are exempt, why aren’t non-commercial domain servers exempt?” Polis asked."
Its cool.:) I was ambiguous.
Yeah, the harassment on the phone and email is going a little too far, especially crowdsourced to penny-arcade. He's such a huge jerk, and he doesn't seem at all to feel bad or even understand what he did wrong, so I'm a little okay with that; he's not being hurt, just constantly annoyed... but after 24 hours certainly that can get excessive. So, yeah.
But sadly the internet is a big place full of lots of people, and several seem to have gone too far, missed the point, and are being gigantic jerks themselves. Harassing his wife or child is obviously wrong, and threatening them is actually more criminal than anything Christoforo did himself.
Slashdot Mirror
A freedom of speech case will make it to the US Supreme Court, but nothing will come of it. In a 5-4 decision, the censorship will be upheld as constitutional.
Man, I feel like you're the voiceover for a future history channel show, chronicling the end times. I can hear it...
Sorry, I was being a little hyperbolic to express my strong feelings. You're right, it wouldn't be the internet. But it would be largely the end of "the internet as we know and love it". All the undergrounding and moving to Europe you've described would likely result in splinter internets, similar to the chinese internet behind the great wall of fire, and multiple "Internets" = "THE internet" is dead.
Can we get /. to join in the blackout? I suppose everybody who visits /. already knows about SOPA, but we really need to get everybody in on this.
:O Think of the lolcats!
They're going to ruin the internet. The INTERNET.
I also asked a lot of other things, and said a lot of other things, which you seem to have ignored.
Way to COMPLETELY ignore everything I said. Wow.
Calm down, I did read TFA and TFS.
"ScientiaMobile, the company formed behind the open source library WURFL, an API used to do mobile device detection for web applications, has issued a DMCA takedown notice against the OpenDDR project on Github. ScientiaMobile claims that OpenDDR is 'ripping them off' by forking their database, which used to be licensed under a liberal license. Newer versions of the device database are licensed under restrictive licenses which do not allow any modification or redistribution."
You show me where in that it is
it's pretty obvious even from TFS that they are not
It specifies that it is used for web applications, but games can be web applications. It does say mobile device detection, and I might have skimmed that as just "device detection", but still, not exactly spelling it out.
Seriously, honest mistake. But it was fairly ambiguous. Get off your high horse. There are FOUR links on that page. Do all 4 count as TFA? Between them, two are just links to the websites of the things involved, those aren't "fing articles" so we're left with two:
A plaintext post of the takedown notice
A blog entry detailing the events, giving context, and including quotes and legal information and history of the involved.
Of those two, which is TFA? The second never mentions ANYTHING about it being a mobile device registry.
Konami have a problem with DDR the outside field of use infringement as there are other uses already out there (e.g. DDR Ram), so they can't argue the uniqueness factor and would have to explicitly argue that that use hurts their games, which would be a lot harder to do as the use has nothing to do with games.
Except it isn't just DDR, its both DDR and DanceDanceRevolution. So, is OpenDDR just "OpenDDR" or does it explain it as an initialism? (not an acronym! )
If they state it as "Open Dance Dance Revolution" then that's a whole different ballgame. And I would argue DDR in the gaming field, especially dance games, implies Dance Dance.
Now is ze time on Sprockets when ve dance!
The article was all about a DMCA notice, so it feels like you implied it. I suppose you were just asking a totally different question that this article brought up. Yeah, its possible this could bring it all to Konami's Lawyer's attention, and get them cease & desist'd.
I'm not sure if "takedown notice" applies explicitly to the DMCA, but the DMCA does have a specific "take down" section, "DMCA take-down notices" have become popular in the common tongue and it isn't really applied to other things. There are probably lots of uses a lawyer could tell us are called "take downs", but you wouldn't call a subpoena or a lawsuit or a C&D a takedown.
Don't host open source projects on sites that are subject to US jurisdiction
Agreed, although, god help us.
This is NOT going anywhere good in the long run...
simply assholes deliberately trying to abuse the system.
And the DMCA seems written explicitly to be abused.
They could try to, although that is A COMPLETELY SEPARATE ISSUE here. Konami doesn't care at all about WURFL and WURFL doesn't care about Konami. Konami could attempt to send a cease & desist (not a take-down) if DDR is indeed trademarked, don't know the specifics there or if Konami cares about suing some small non-profit non-commercial project. That said, plenty of companies do, and maybe Konami could. Or maybe they couldn't IANAL. Sounds like you aren't either :P
This story was all about OpenDDR using open-sourced code that changed licences, and the permissions and licences involved therein. It has nothing to do with the DDR brand and so nothing to do with Konami, its purely about the software implementation of OpenDDR.
TLDR: DMCA is about copyright of software intellectual property. Trademark is about protection of consumer brand names. You're mixing the two. Konami might have a trademark infringement claim, but that is seperate from WURFL's code copyright claim.
Except when you consider the error rate of counting the votes. This isn't even a matter of not RTFA, you didn't RTFSUMMARY.
.0001%, we can't declare a clear winner.
If the error rate in counting votes is higher than the difference between two candidates' votes, then we DO NOT KNOW who actually won. It is ENTIRELY POSSIBLE that a handful of votes could have been miscounted or misplaced somewhere along the line, the people who collect and count the votes admit this.
Also, it doesn't take 50% plus 1 to win, because there are more than 1 candidate in a primary. This isn't the general election bro...
He received 25.0001% of the vote, with the next candidate receiving 25% of the vote. If we can't be sure of that
However, since this isn't the general election, it is up to the Republican Party how to handle it, not the Supreme Court or any nonsense like that.
What about the other 13 games on there? You said: "Maybe games from 2 years ago supported XP, but most of the games on the shelf now don't." This is clearly false. I give you a list of 14 of the top 15 games released in the last 6 months, and you have a problem with a single game that "doesn't count" in your view? Disingenuous.
I admitted that a large part of my perception had to do with using xp 64, and it being far more broken and unsupported than 32 bit xp.
Just Cause 2 is another game that doesn't support xp, off the top of my head.
XP is getting old, but aside from security and software support, it is a perfectly viable OS. GFWL and DX10/11 are pushing developers towards vista/7. Its not as bad as I thought (again, I run xp 64, got a bad impression) but still...
And how much did you pay for this again?
It was several years ago, so I can't be positive, but I'm fairly certain it was over $100, quite the expensive software, and I've purchased Windows XP more than once too, for my computer, my parents' computer, etc.
That said, I know there are more. My girlfriend's computer (windows xp 32 bit) has refused to install several games lately. Battlefield 3 was one of them, but not the only one. I'm trying to remember the others...
Nice how you cherry-pick and ignore my arguments. Games For Windows Live is broken for XP 64 and Windows has abandoned it. Allow me to reiterate: ALL GFWL GAMES ARE BROKEN ON XP 64. Support for 32 bit GFWL XP is going out. Direct x 10 and 11 are vista/7 exclusive. These are indeed factual evidence. How can you argue with that? Microsoft deliberately made it so that DirectX now only works on the latest version of Windows. More games than I thought still include Dx9 options, but you miss out. And increasingly more games are not including Dx9, it takes lots of additional development time.
Minecraft is a java game, that hardly counts. It is available on every system, even linux, unlike most games. It runs on the java virtual machine, not on windows xp.
I guess I've been having more problems because I'm on windows xp 64 bit, which is really windows server 2003 64-bit or some nonsense and was completely dropped by Microsoft awhile ago, unlike XP 32 which is just running out of support.
Its a free market, as long as lots of people still use XP then software developers will target it, but its a cost/payoff balance. As more people move to the latest OS, fewer will target the old OS, so more will move to the new OS,... its a cycle.
Microsoft absolutely knows this, and they try to push it. It would be bad business not to, they spend tons of money (especially other departments like the zune, windows phone, etc.) and have to make it up by selling new software.
But I don't buy it when they say they "couldn't" make Dx10/11 work on XP, they just didn't want to continue to support an old software when they had a new one to sell.
most major games
Anything Direct X 10/11, by way of Microsoft's tactics, is windows vista/7 exclusive unless they write support for the dx9 renderer too, which is increasingly no longer the case. Maybe games from 2 years ago supported XP, but most of the games on the shelf now don't. The Old Republic does because like WoW, it is purposely targeting the lowest common denominator of gaming. Most next-gen games are vista/7 exclusive. Skyrim does support XP, so I guess its not too uncommon.
On the other hand,
Games for Windows Live does not support windows XP anymore (64 bit is broken and unplayable for ALL games), and LOTS of games force you to use GFWL login. So.. there.
You got it backwards; more people are seeing Mission Impossible. So even though MI cost more money to produce, its MI that would cost $3 to see, where Young Adult would cost $15. Since Young Adult is less popular, though, this seems accurate. You pay more to get something harder to come by. Less people are going to see that movie, so you have to pay more per person to make it worth showing that movie in the theater.
They have to pay back the same amount to the studios regardless how how many tickets they sell, so why would they implement variable pricing?
well, maybe thats the problem. Used to be, if you wanted to buy one blockbuster movie, you had to buy ALL the movies from that studio. It was how they sold their crappy movies.
See: the Paramount anti-trust stuff.
So, it sounds like we're still caught in a similar situation, movie studios having too much control over theaters. Or maybe its just our culture is too ingrained in the idea that movies should all be equivalent in cost.
Personally a world where each film succeeds or fails on its own merits doesn't sound too bad. I guess it would suck for the movie studios, and they've gotta aggregate that cost somewhere. Still, why not do it on the bottom line, we made this much off this film, we lost on this film? They already do that, so why try to cover it up? And now I remember an article I read about Hollywood accounting, and how insane their practices are...
Seriously? What kind of distorted world view do you have? Software developers go where the demand is. Software is still being supported and developed to run on Windows XP to this day and it will continue to be as long as customers run XP. Please, cite some evidence showing Microsoft is sending goons to software vendors and forcing them to code for Windows 7 only if you're going to spout such tripe.
They're not sending goons, lets not get hyperbolic :P
So, what still supports XP out there? Every box I've seen in the last few years only says Vista/7
I've got to buy it again every 2 years.
You realize we're talking about upgrade from a product relaesed 10 years ago... so it's more like paying $100 every 10 years.
There was this thing called Vista. It was pretty bad, so most of us don't talk about it. They sold it to us, it had problems, they fixed them, and sold it to us again (rather than fixing what we bought).
If only more of the software industry would target ... mac
Apples upgrades cost less but also come more frequently and are subsidized by hardware. Further, Apple isn't very concerned about your "I bought this software, it's mine, and I'll use it" mentality, as they restrict what type of device you can run their OS on very heavily. Want to install your 10 year old Windows XP OS on a brand new state of the art computer? Nothing stopping you. Not gonna have much success with with OSX 10.0 on a brand new Apple computer though. And remind me, which company is forcing you to upgrade again? Or how about if you want to install your brand new Windows 7 OS on a 5 year old computer? Might be a little slow but go right ahead. You'll find that installing OSX 10.7 on a 5 year old intel Mac is impossible.
Apple's upgrades are subsidized by hardware... this is a flaw? Sounds like a good business strategy to me. No, Apple isn't crazy about software freedom, but I wasn't really talking about that. I was talking about the ability to continue to use an old computer, and I assure you that an old mac running OSX 10.0 will stay secure a lot longer than windows 98 stock. You have trouble installing OSX 10 on a modern mac... but that is because it is an entirely different processor architecture. I wouldn't expect you to be able to install Windows x86 on an ARM either.
Also, Win7 on a 5 year old computer might be a little slow? HAH. Try frozen solid. The bloat is insane. Even if you turn off Aero glass, it still uses waaaaay more resources than XP ever did.
The real point is, we need more options, we need more competition. Apple is really a niche, they serve those who have a little extra money and would prefer good service and good aesthetics without too much maintenance. But they're not targeting the vast majority of us, the power users, who have been burned by Windows for years. Linux is a good alternative (and its many flavors) but the software market has yet to embrace it. So we continue to deal with Microsoft's OS monopoly.
Reminds me of another reason you can't keep running XP, only the latest and greatest windows gets support from software vendors, because MS strong arms everybody into moving every time they come out with a major upgrade, and they drop the last version.
Microsoft should be more honest, and just charge you a yearly fee to use windows, and then continue to upgrade and support it forever. The whole buying a box of software is an illusion. Their terms of service make this all the more so.
Paying $100+ for Windows seems like even more of a ripoff when I've got to buy it again every 2 years.
I bought this software, its mine, and I'll use it, thank you very much.
If only more of the software industry would target linux and mac, we could get away from having to pay an arm and a leg to Redmond every few years.
Dunno about you guys, but I don't exactly have a ton of free cash to spend.
Except that he works as PR for the company that makes the Avenger, and he just got canned HARD. They did the right thing and apologized, and now THEY're going to get lots of free publicity, which is cool, they actually deserve it. Meanwhile anybody who googles this guy's name is going to see a MESS and he shouldn't be able to work anywhere near PR in the next century.
Haha, Mike K from Penny Arcade even cast doubt as to whether he HAS a wife or child :P Not sure, so I guess I'll take him on the benefit of the doubt that there are death threats. That said, you're absolutely right, so far his MO has been lying and misinforming left and right to try to cover his own ass. I wouldn't be surprised to find that he only got spammed with some internet memes, and he called it death threats to get sympathy. Still, we don't know.
Amazingly, there is a specific exemption for a few sites inside SOPA, of which GoDaddy is one. -__- The corruption knows no bounds.
godaddy supports sopa because of exemption Quote,
"Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO), the only member of Congress present at the hearing with any tech experience, having founded several web companies... Polis pointed out that SOPA and Smith’s amendment already excluded certain operators of sub-domains, such as GoDaddy.com, from being subject to shutdowns under SOPA. If companies like GoDaddy.com are exempt, why aren’t non-commercial domain servers exempt?” Polis asked."
Its cool. :) I was ambiguous.
Yeah, the harassment on the phone and email is going a little too far, especially crowdsourced to penny-arcade. He's such a huge jerk, and he doesn't seem at all to feel bad or even understand what he did wrong, so I'm a little okay with that; he's not being hurt, just constantly annoyed... but after 24 hours certainly that can get excessive. So, yeah.
But sadly the internet is a big place full of lots of people, and several seem to have gone too far, missed the point, and are being gigantic jerks themselves. Harassing his wife or child is obviously wrong, and threatening them is actually more criminal than anything Christoforo did himself.
I was referring more to the fallout with his company, how he will likely lose all business and be unable to get any work in PR.